Saint Thomas Becket

I‘ve written twice before about Saint Thomas Becket, whose feast day is today.

This year, I’d like to just quote a small passage from G.K. Chesterton on the matter of Becket’s martyrdom:

When four knights scattered the blood and brains of Saint Thomas of Canterbury it was not only a sign of anger but a sort of black admiration. They wished for his blood, but they wished even more for his brains. Such a blow will remain for ever unintelligible unless we realize what the brains of St. Thomas were thinking about just before they were distributed over the floor.

They were thinking about the great medieval conception that the Church is the judge of the world. Becket objected to a priest being tried even by the Lord Chief Justice. And his reason was simple: because the Lord Chief Justice was being tried by the priest. The judiciary was itself sub judice. The kings were themselves in the dock. The idea was to create an invisible kingdom without armies or prisons, but with complete freedom to condemn publicly all the kingdoms of the earth.

And that battle my friends, for the freedom to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to call the unjust to account for their actions, is without end in this world.

From the film “Becket”: